Posted 15 March 2018 - 03:27 PM

Thanks for the link. I still wonder why the club did not publicly release these 2016 totals, if they were actually this good. Or better numbers since.
The next question must ask why these supposed 11,000 STHs do not actually show up at games.

We are good enough to beat the best teams, and bad enough to lose to the worst teams.

Posted 15 March 2018 - 08:56 PM

The Crew do suck and just because they beat us in the playoffs or a MLS cup final isn't a reason to not give a shit about what is happening there.

They have a dedicated hard core fan base the same as we do.

If it can happen to them, why can't the league move our team down the line?

We are a MLS 1.0 team and don't sell out our stadium either. We generate very little buzz in our local market.

What if Red Bull wanted to get out and the league bought the team and folded it or moved them away so that they could reboot and start fresh again with a new MLS 5 or 6.0 team at that point. If the Chivas USA / LAFC blueprint is super successful, why not try it here after learning from what worked/didn't work there.

Spot on. The Crew are creating yet another blueprint for how MLS ownership groups will screw over longtime fans. They've been choking off marketing and community outreach for years, and on top of that now they're juking attendance numbers to look as bad as possible. If LAFC is our (and Chicago's) Ghost of Christmas future, then the Crew are the harbinger for small market teams like RSL and Orlando when their stadiums are slightly less shiny.

The issue with this move is it is entirely rooted in greed and magical thinking. We're not talking about a zombie franchise like Chivas USA, a situation where ownership came out and was honest about financial struggles, but set forth benchmarks they needed to hit in order to stay (what the Hunts did in KC before selling to local owners), or an untenable stadium arrangement that was known for years (League-owned San Jose renting from a college that wanted them out). This is an under-capitalized owner with a VC background who has figured out some kind of scam to make a bunch of money if he can get his team out an unfashionable market.

Garber & Co. are as much to blame as anyone. In their haste to keep increasing franchise values, MLS continues allowing crappy owners into the league as long as they write a check bigger than the last guy. Yet we're somehow surprised when they end up doing shitty and/or nefarious things.

Longtime fans are pissed because Columbus is not an objectively bad market (especially when you're considering letting Cincinnati or Sacramento into the league), and there was no reason to poison the well there. Then the apparent endgame is an even more questionable and unproven location, whose only qualification is that bloated rich guys like attending SXSW and something something millennials.